1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to calendars and appointments and, more particularly, on-line calendars and appointments.
2. Description of the Related Art
For many years, individuals and businesses have maintained printed calendars to schedule their time and to remember when events have been scheduled. Typically, individuals or business representatives would write on the printed calendars when scheduling events. More sophisticated scheduling and time management printed products are also used to maintain schedules and guide time management. Besides printed calendars, electronic calendars are commonplace. Electronic calendars are provided by software executing on various computing devices, such as personal computers (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) or handheld computers (e.g., PalmPilot). These types of devices, whether paper or electronic based, are generally referred to as personal information managers (PIMs).
In addition, when making appointments, individuals and business representatives often view their respective calendars and converse in person or via telephone as to when their schedules permit the scheduling of an appointment. This requires that all parties to the appointment converse in selecting a date and time for an appointment. As a consequence, it is often difficult and frustrating when trying to schedule appointments.
More recently, web-based calendars have been created and made available to users over the Internet. These calendars allow users with Internet access to maintain their own calendar on-line. FIG. 1 is a screen shot of a web-based calendar offered by Yahoo Inc. at www.calendar.yahoo.com. A user can access their web-based calendar by use of a network browser (e.g., HTML browser) coupled to the Internet. These web-based calendars allow users to maintain their schedule of events on the Internet. Some of the advantages of web-based calendars are that they are accessible worldwide and can be shared amongst users. However, there are several disadvantages to existing web-based calendars. One disadvantage is that appointment capabilities are not provided. More particularly, although web-based calendars are provided there has conventionally not been any means to efficiently schedule on-line appointments with others. While a user of a web-based calendar could interact with a network browser to schedule an event in his/her own web-based calendar, there is no automated on-line mechanism to schedule appointments.
There is a need for improved on-line calendars and appointment making capabilities.